dotCommonwealhttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/rss/all
enNaked Racism, or Naked Partisanship?https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/naked-racism-or-naked-partisanship
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<div class="field-item even"><div>Upon the Supreme Court's 2013 <em>Shelby</em> ruling that invalidated long-standing preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act, a number of states that had been subject to those provisions immediately began to impose new restrictions on voting and voter registration. Many believe these to have a disproportionate effect on African American voters, and thus many also and understandably believe these restrictions to be racially motivated. But what if it's not racism that generated opposition to the VRA and spurred the move toward the new, stricter requirements their backers say are aimed at reducing vote fraud? What if it instead is "naked partisanship"?</div>
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<div>That's a possibility Randall Kennedy floats in his <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2015/08/old-poison-new-battles/"><em>Harper's</em> review (subscription)</a> of Ari Berman's new book, <em>Give Us the Ballot</em>. After several pages spent on the history of voting rights since Reconstruction -- including the 1965 passage of the VRA and the political hostility toward it, as seen only in part by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan's expressed preference for not signing reauthorization -- Kennedy toward the end of the piece cites recent legal scholarship in reconsidering the significance of race in the <em>Shelby</em> decision and subsequent implementation of voting rights restrictions.</div>
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<div>Samuel Issacharoff, for instance, writing in the <em>Harvard Review</em>, "compared Section 5 of the VRA to an aging athlete, 'one step too slow to carry the team.'" Its forced retirement may be a good thing, prompting voting rights advocates to to consider "new mechanisms to a new era" that should no longer focus on "'the historically central question of racial exclusion.... [T]he category of race increasingly fails to capture the primary motivation for what has become a battlefield in partisan wars.'" Similarly, Guy-Uriel E. Charles and Luis Fuentes Rohwer in the <em>Yale Law Journal</em>--though skeptical of the <em>Shelby</em> decision--"do not see the end of preclearance as the disaster" that some bemoan: "'[I]n the current era we cannot say without any amount of certainty that the central problem of voting is race.'" Kennedy himself comes down on this side: "The VRA has completed the main task it was designed to address. Societal changes have made inconceivable the recrudescence of wholesale, unambiguous <em>racial</em> disenfranchisement" (italics his). </div>
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<div>The reaction to this of those alarmed by the spate of recorded deaths of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement; by the racially motivated attack on Charleston's Emanuel AME Church; and by the edgy resentment of those opposed to the removal of Confederate symbols from public spaces might be: Wouldn't it be pretty to think so? A return to unambiguous racial disenfranchisement may not seem so inconceivable in the midst of all of this. Then add in what this weekend's <em>New York Times Magazine</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/magazine/voting-rights-act-dream-undone.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;version=Moth-Visible&amp;module=inside-nyt-region&amp;region=inside-nyt-region&amp;WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&amp;_r=0">lengthy cover story</a> characterizes as a five-decade effort by Republican activists at systematically dismantling the protections of the VRA: Is there anything so ambiguous about that campaign?</div>
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<div>And yet: what if Kennedy is on to something?</div>
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Sat, 01 Aug 2015 21:21:54 +0000Dominic Preziosi37475 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgHillary and capitalismhttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/hillary-and-capitalism
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<div class="field-item even"><p><a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/class-warfare-or-gambling-society">Last April 24, I noted here</a> a letter from Laurence D. Fink to the chief executives of Fortune 500 firms. Fink, Chairman of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager (approximately $5 trillion), expressed alarm at how “short-termism” was skewing the economy. A low capital gains tax (20 percent) on any stock held more than a year provided an incentive for shareholders, investors, and executives to value quick returns rather than long-term growth in productivity, work force skills, and innovation. </p>
<p>Fink had a remedy. He proposed taxing gains on investments held less than three years as ordinary income (around 40 percent) and investments held for less than six months at an even higher rate. The rates on capital gains would then tail off, even dropping to zero after ten years of ownership. </p>
<p>Now Hillary Clinton has taken up the idea, proposing a different schedule of rates—ordinary income rates for the first two years, then declining not to zero but the present rate over six years—but using the same principle. “Since when was one year considered a long-term investment?” Mr. Fink wrote last spring. Hillary improved on that line by pointing out that one year “may count as ‘long-term’ for my baby granddaughter, but not for the American economy.”</p>
<p>This sort of proposal, as I wrote here in April, does not address a lot of questions about the capital gains tax, either its fairness or its effectiveness. I simply quoted William A. Galston and Elaine Kamarck, who wrote on a <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2015/04/17-fink-buybacks-corporate-short-termism-galston-kamarck">Brookings Institution blog</a> that “Fink has opened up a crucial debate, and it’s time for Congress and presidential aspirants to join it.”</p>
<p>Hillary has. </p>
<p>Right-wing denunciations were immediate. </p>
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Fri, 31 Jul 2015 18:39:57 +0000Peter Steinfels37474 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgElsewherehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/elsewhere-25
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<div class="field-item even"><p>In the <em>New York Times Magazine</em>, Eliza Griswold on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/is-this-the-end-of-christianity-in-the-middle-east.html?ref=magazine">the plight of Christians in the Middle East</a>:</p></div>
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Thu, 30 Jul 2015 22:09:45 +0000Matthew Boudway37473 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgAnd that Iranian money?https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/and-iranian-money
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<div class="field-item even"><p>What will the Iranians do with all of that money when sanctions are lifted. Some opponents of the nuclear agreement have argued that they will buy conventional weapons and carry on with their terrorism, etc.</p></div>
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Thu, 30 Jul 2015 19:27:58 +0000Margaret O'Brien Steinfels37472 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgIn Defense of Germanshttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/defense-germans
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<div class="field-item even"><p>Can I say a few words in defense of Germans? The Euro crisis that’s been building for years now, with Greece as its molten core, is hard to comprehend. I mean, I get the general idea. Two dozen nations (give or take) are united by one currency but lack a governing entity that can set fiscal policies. It’s like trying to run an orchestra without a conductor. But is it in fact true, as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/opinion/paul-krugman-europes-impossible-dream.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;module=opinion-c-col-left-region&amp;region=opinion-c-col-left-region&amp;WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&amp;_r=1">Paul Krugman</a> has been repeating for years, that Brussels and its technocrats are “trying to run Europe on the basis of fantasy economics”? For an untrained person, the fine points (or any points) of macroeconomics and international finance can get pretty murky.</p>
<p>What has been clear is the role increasingly assigned to Germany, at least here in the United States: villain. A recent article from the <em>New York Times</em>, ominously titled <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/opinion/germanys-destructive-anger.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;module=opinion-c-col-right-region&amp;region=opinion-c-col-right-region&amp;WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region">“Germany’s Destructive Anger,”</a> faults the Germans not merely for being selfishly shortsighted in their economic policies, but for being rigid, vindictive, self-righteous and dyspeptic. The article is by an economist, and that’s significant. Most “average” Americans may only vaguely know that a Euro crisis is happening (“you mean, the soccer thing?”), but if you sketch for them the outlines of the current situation, most will say that the Greeks need to clean up their act and pay their debts. Why should the Germans be blamed? But the opposite opinion prevails among economists, almost all of whom see Germany at fault. The main points:</p>
<p>1) Austerity in Europe has been a mistaken policy. When financial crisis hit here in 2008, our government responded with bailouts, government spending, and cheap money to inflate the economy. Europe should do the same.</p>
<p>2) Germany fails to grasp its own self-interest. If lesser countries are allowed to leave the Euro zone—or forced out—it will over time almost certainly damage Germany’s powerful export machine. But Germans are choosing to punish Greece, rather than taking a coolly systemic view of the situation.</p>
<p>3) Germans are conveniently forgetting the role debt and debt forgiveness played at critical moments in their own history: after World War I, when massive debt destabilized governments and led to fascism; and after World War II, when the victorious allies chose the Marshall Plan (another proposal, the Morgenthau Plan, which sought to keep Germany perpetually under-developed, was rejected), forgave war debts, and laid the foundation for the postwar “economic miracle” in West Germany.</p>
<p>Increasingly, though, the critique rests on the idea that Germans are mean and vindictive.</p>
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Thu, 30 Jul 2015 15:01:15 +0000Rand Richards Cooper37471 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgWhat's the problem? (Cont.)https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/whats-problem-cont
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<div class="field-item even"><p>(Continuation): A California Superior Court judge has issued a temporary restraining order barring further releases of videos surreptiously made by David Daleiden and the guerrilla film maker, Center for Medical Progress. <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/restraining-order-issued-anti-abortion-groups-video-32768879">This ABCnews story</a> seems to imply that the company StemExpress is featured in those videos. (StemExpress was featured in the science section of the NYTimes story previously posted).</p></div>
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Thu, 30 Jul 2015 14:22:52 +0000Margaret O'Brien Steinfels37469 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgProminent Ladyjerk Gets Happy Endinghttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/prominent-ladyjerk-gets-happy-ending
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<div class="field-item even"><p>In the movie <em>Trainwreck</em>, the comedian Amy Schumer stars as a reckless but successful magazine editor who has been drinking for love in all the wrong places. Like Schumer’s sketch-comedy series <em>Inside Amy Schumer</em> (Comedy Central), <em>Trainwreck </em>contains its share of off-color humor. (“You dress him like that just so no one else wants to have sex with him? That's cool,” she asks her sister about her husband.) She may not be everyone’s cup of tea; critics deride her work as self-gratifying, crude, and offensive. But her fans call her a brilliant, courageous feminist leader. Whatever one makes of her work, there’s no denying that she is unapologetically herself. It’s not a shtick. Schumer wants to challenge the ways in which we talk about feminism—as loaded a term as that may be.</p>
<p>As my friends and I left the theater after seeing the movie, all we could say was how much we love Schumer. Her voice is refreshing in a time when the culture seems to see feminism through one or the other of two opposing lenses. There are those who believe that feminism means that women should be able to do anything they want sexually without any criticism or fear of consequences – “if men can do it, so can we.” Suggest otherwise and you’re keeping women down. And then there are those who believe that by policing our own behavior, we can flourish as true women. “True empowerment” means being modest, thinking about consequences, and avoiding risky behavior.</p>
<p>In the movie, Amy drinks and sleeps around and explicitly avoids seeking a long-term relationship—at least at first.</p>
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Tue, 28 Jul 2015 19:10:53 +0000Caroline Belden37455 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgThere Will Be No Buckley Revivalhttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/there-will-be-no-buckley-revival
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<div class="field-item even"><p>"It’s as if he never existed," Andrew Ferguson <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/buckley-revival_996599.html?nopager=1">reports</a> a friend recently commenting about William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of <em>National Review</em> who died in 2008. Ferguson's friend mainly was referring to Buckley's place—or rather, lack thereof—among the rising generation of writers, and he goes on to suggest that "it’s not clear that younger journalists, tweeting and Snapchatting and texting and Instagramming all the livelong day, have more than a vague notion of who he was." His interlocutor is right, I think, but for reasons Ferguson might be too kind to consider directly.</p>
<p>Rather than blaming the digital lives of young writers for their lack of attention to Buckley, my explanation is simpler. Buckley really never wrote much of lasting significance. If you had to associate him with one form, it would be the newspaper or magazine column; the sustained work of seriously crafted books and essays eluded him. He never wrote a movement-shaping book like Russell Kirk's <em>The Conservative Mind</em>. His intellectual virtues, from what I've been able to discern, are those of the debater and polemicist more than the studious man of letters.</p>
<p>Think about it this way: If you wanted to introduce Buckley to a young writer, what book of his would you choose?</p>
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Tue, 28 Jul 2015 17:25:50 +0000Matthew Sitman37454 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgWhat's the problem? IIhttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/whats-problem-ii
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<div class="field-item even"><p>Don't want to prolong this discussion, but the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/health/fetal-tissue-from-abortions-for-research-is-traded-in-a-gray-zone.html?action=click&amp;contentCollection=science&amp;region=rank&amp;module=package&amp;version=highlights&amp;contentPlacement=2&amp;pgtype=sectionfront&amp;_r=0">Science section of the NYTimes</a> (July 28) tells us some more about fetal research, fetal tissues, and fetal parts pricing. I'm guessing Mr. Daleiden's video prompted the story.</p></div>
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Tue, 28 Jul 2015 14:16:40 +0000Margaret O'Brien Steinfels37453 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgDe-screeninghttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/de-screening
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<div class="field-item even"><p>Every summer for two weeks we rent a cabin in the woods of Vermont while our nine-year-old daughter goes to a Quaker-run farm and wilderness day camp nearby. Our getaway seats us in the very lap of nature. Birds of all kinds sing outside our windows; giant variegated moths drowse on the screens; the staccato tree work of woodpeckers forms a background percussion. Some unidentifiable creature howls in the woods at 2 a.m. That’s enough to make me rethink sleeping outside in my tent.</p>
<p>But what truly scares some potential renters of the cabin, its owner tells me, is not the presence of wild animals, but rather the absence of something else: internet. The cabin, christened “Off the Grid,” offers no TV, no WiFi, no computers, no cellphone reception. To make a call, we drive a mile down the road to a little spot between the hills where you can get a signal. To triage my email, I drive over to Woodstock twice a week and spend half an hour on the computers at the library.</p>
<p>The prospect of an unplugged vacation turns out to be highly polarizing. “It pretty much instantly rules out two-thirds of the people who inquire,” the cabin’s owner says. “The other third wouldn’t have it any other way.”</p>
<p>We are—and very happily—in that other, neo-Luddite third.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/last-word-flick-flick">jeremiads on the topic of handheld-addiction</a> and digital distraction are well known to my friends. Among those friends are many who, in theory anyway, share my belief that digital devices have become a kind of mass addiction, yet still find it really hard to unplug for any substantial period. That’s a widespread reality these days. Every few months, it seems, I read an essay breathlessly touting some device-free getaway camp whose adult attendees rhapsodize proudly about unplugging—for a weekend! </p>
<p>Being away from screens for two weeks poses some logistical challenges, especially in trying to clear work and correspondence away beforehand—and catch up afterward. But the benefits, for my wife and me anyway, outweigh them. Time and space to read more. To exercise and be outdoors more. To prepare a real meal, instead of throwing something together in haste, as is (alas) too often the rule at home.</p>
<p>And, most of all, de-screening spurs conversation.</p>
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Mon, 27 Jul 2015 14:19:25 +0000Rand Richards Cooper37451 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgGrace Aboundinghttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/grace-abounding
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<div class="field-item even"><p>On this feast of Saint James, fifty years ago, I celebrated my "first Mass" in the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome. My parents and then sixteen year old brother were present, along with relatives and friends from the United States and Italy. In those pre-cellphone and pre-Skype days, I had not seen or even spoken with my family for almost three years.</p>
<p>Many of those who were present that day have, of course, gone before "marked with the sign of faith."</p>
<p>The first reading for today's Mass has only grown in meaning in the intervening years:</p></div>
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Sat, 25 Jul 2015 13:01:53 +0000Robert P. Imbelli37450 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgA blind man on a galloping horsehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/blind-man-galloping-horse
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<div class="field-item even"><p>My father left school at the age of 16. His father was not pleased and told him that if he wasn’t going to school, he was going to work and brought him down to the brickyards with him. It didn’t take long before my father decided that perhaps he should look for something else to do. He went to secretarial school in New York City, learned shorthand and typing, and found his first real job as a travelling secretary on The Twentieth-Century Limited, the crack train that ran between New York and Chicago. He was available to take dictation and prepare documents for passengers.</p></div>
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Fri, 24 Jul 2015 16:01:18 +0000Joseph A. Komonchak37449 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgNow on the websitehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/now-website-3
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<div class="field-item even"><p>There's new content on the website.</p>
<p>First, E.J. Dionne Jr. explains why Donald Trump should win an award for exposing the double-standards of certain politicans: "For Republicans, Trump was a genius until he wasn’t."</p>
<blockquote><p>The bowing before Trump, you’ll recall, was happening when the man was the midwife of birtherism. Over and over, he questioned whether President Obama was eligible to be in office because he had allegedly not been born in the United States....</p></blockquote></div>
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Thu, 23 Jul 2015 20:01:41 +0000Kaitlin Campbell37448 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgMoral Voices from The Easthttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/moral-voices-east
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<div class="field-item even"><p>On Monday afternoon we finished, here in Bangalore, our first ever Pan-Asian Conference of Theological Ethicists: <a href="http://ctewc.dvk.in/index.html">“Doing Catholic Theological Ethics in a Cross-Cultural and Interreligious Asian Context.” </a> There were 95 ethicists, among whom were 14 plenary speakers and another 36 presenting paper during concurrent sessions.</p>
<p>One of the finest plenary sessions, “Doing Interfaith Ethics in Asia” involved three speakers from countries where Catholics are very much a minority. Delivering a flawless paper, “A God by any other name,” Sharon Bong covered the trajectory of lawsuits filed by the Catholic church in Malaysia against its government’s decision to permit only Muslims to use the word “Allah” in referencing God. For twenty centuries, Malay-speaking Christian Malaysians have used “Allah” as their word for God, easily predating the Muslim use of the word. In 2008, the Catholic press was banned from using the word, or else it would forfeit licensing. With a final court decision ultimately upholding the government ban, Bong entertained whether forgiveness or resistance marks the proper ethical response.</p>
<p>Haruko Okano from Japan proposed an argument on how feminist Catholic writings on “moral responsibility” could help contemporary Japanese ethics. Explaining how much a shaming culture inhibits any autonomous accountability, Okano considered how often a Japanese apology is a face-saving action that has little to do with assuming personal or social moral culpability. When asked what was the meaning of the Japanese apology for World War II, she answered that it was a way of simply saying, let bygones be bygones, a reply that left the audience speechless.</p>
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Thu, 23 Jul 2015 17:37:28 +0000James F. Keenan37446 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgTalk about wasting your money!https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/talk-about-wasting-your-money
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<div class="field-item even"><p>AIPAC, Sheldon Adelson, and some other members of the U.S. Jewish establishment have announced their intention to spend millions (maybe billions!) to defeat the Iran nuclear deal.</p></div>
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Thu, 23 Jul 2015 17:20:40 +0000Margaret O'Brien Steinfels37445 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgElsewherehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/elsewhere-24
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<div class="field-item even"><p>From the <em>London Review of Books</em>, an <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n15/tariq-ali/diary?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=3715&amp;utm_content=usca_subsact&amp;hq_e=el&amp;hq_m=3855284&amp;hq_l=9&amp;hq_v=8365579d10">excellent piece</a> by Tariq Ali about the current situation in Greece. He begins by comparing the Syriza government's capitulation to E.U. demands with the U.S.-backed military coup in 1967:</p></div>
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Wed, 22 Jul 2015 18:42:57 +0000Matthew Boudway37443 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgWhat's the problem? UPDATEhttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/whats-problem-update
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<div class="field-item even"><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-looking-away-from-abortion.html?partner=rssnyt&amp;emc=rss&amp;_r=0"><strong>July 26 Update: Douthat is on the case.</strong></a></p></div>
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Wed, 22 Jul 2015 18:26:07 +0000Margaret O'Brien Steinfels37442 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgSr. Mary Scullion Writes on the Firing of Margie Wintershttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/sr-mary-scullion-writes-firing-margie-winters
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<div class="field-item even"><p>dotCommonweal reader Jack Marth and members of the Waldron Mercy Academy parent community have highlighted a column in support of the school’s former religious instruction director Margie Winters, whose dismissal <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/fighting-firing-philadelphia">I wrote about last week</a>. One of the co-authors of the piece is Mary Scullion—a member of the Religious Sisters of Mercy and co-founder and executive director of Project H.O.M.E., an organization devoted to ending homelessness in Philadelphia.</p></div>
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Wed, 22 Jul 2015 15:27:13 +0000Dominic Preziosi37441 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgMayors Gather at Vatican to Urge Climate Pacthttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/mayors-gather-vatican-urge-climate-pact
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<div class="field-item even"><p>New York Mayor Bill de Blasio <a href="http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/503-15/transcript-mayor-de-blasio-holds-media-availability-the-vatican">called it</a> "an extraordinarily effective act" -- the Vatican's move to draw together 60 mayors from around the world to <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/07/21/apnewsbreak-mayors-at-vatican-seek-bold-climate-agreement">sign a statement</a> today that "human-induced climate change is a scientific reality and its effective control is a moral imperative for humanity." </p></div>
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Wed, 22 Jul 2015 01:56:27 +0000Paul Moses37440 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgKasich Enters the Race, Which Makes... How Many?https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/kasich-enters-race-which-makes-how-many
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<div class="field-item even"><div>There are about 470 days left until the 2016 presidential election, almost as many as the number of candidates there are for the Republican nomination, a group that grows one larger today with the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/28/politics/john-kasich-2016-election-ohio-announcement/">entrance of Ohio governor John Kasich</a>. For a primer on Kasich--whose <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/05/a_mailmans_son_in_mckees_rocks.html">nickname in childhood was "Pope" </a>and who once considered the priesthood--you could do worse than read E. J. Dionne Jr.'s latest column, which <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/kasich-walker-debate">we're featuring here</a>. He assesses Kasich mainly in contrast to another midwestern governor, Wisconsin's Scott Walker, contending that the former deserves a fuller hearing given, among other things, his support for the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion in his state--a case he made on moral grounds, "arguing that at heaven’s door, St. Peter is 'probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor.'” Kasich, too, though undeniably a conservative, sensibly "recalibrated" after Ohio voters rejected his bid to end collective bargaining for public union employees, then reached out to "his previous enemies" so successfully he won the endorsement of the Carpenters' Union last year.</div>
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<div>Just where this sensible approach will help him wedge into the clown car is questionable, especially with the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/28/politics/john-kasich-2016-election-ohio-announcement/">manspreading</a> Donald Trump taking up more than his fair share of space. Trump is at the top of the <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html">most recent polls at 24 percent</a>, double the support of the second-place Jeb Bush, although most of the survey was taken before his comments denigrating Sen. John McCain's war record and imprisonment, and now the <em>DesMoines Register</em> <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-07-21/donald-trump-tops-gop-poll-as-des-moines-register-says-he-should-drop-out">has called for him to drop out</a>. But Rush Limbaugh says Trump can survive it. Voters, <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/07/20/trump_teachable_moment_how_come_liberals_can_savage_mccain_s_service">he told his listeners Monday</a>, "have not seen an embattled public figure stand up for himself, double down and tell everybody to go to hell ... Trump is not following the rules that targets are supposed to follow. Targets are supposed to immediately grovel, apologize." It's hard to think that there are American voters who are so disaffected that Limbaugh will prove right.</div>
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<div>Donald Trump.... Is there another public figure aside from maybe Al Sharpton who has so conclusively disproved the adage that if you ignore something long enough it will go away? Nearly thirty years ago, in my first job out of college, my colleagues and I were already following his skewering by the old satirical magazine <em>Spy</em>--which unfailingly referred to him, at every mention, as "<a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/09/05/a_grab_bag_of_donald_trump_invective/">short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump</a>." I'll risk speaking on behalf of New Yorkers in saying we've been especially oppressed by his presence these many decades since.</div>
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Tue, 21 Jul 2015 14:23:58 +0000Dominic Preziosi37439 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgSummer Readinghttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/summer-reading-1
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<div class="field-item even"><p>Maybe no scene from a television series speaks so perfectly to my life as this one from season two of <em>Gilmore Girls</em>:</p>
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<p>Like Rory, I spend far too much time debating which books I should bring with me when I leave the house. And like Rory, I always decide that loading up is the safer option than winnowing down. Just last week, I went to the doctor’s office and, before leaving my apartment, convinced myself that I needed to bring a book of poetry (Marie Ponsot’s <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780375709876"><em>Springing</em></a>), a work of nonfiction (Clifford Thompson’s <a href="http://www.autumnhouse.org/product/twin-of-blackness-a-memoir-clifford-thompson/"><em>Twin of Blackness</em></a>), and a novel (Octavia Butler’s <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780446603775"><em>Dawn</em></a>). Rationally, I know that this kind of overpacking is unnecessary, even neurotic; emotionally, I’m panicked if I’m not carrying a library with me.</p>
<p>(For the record, I didn’t end up reading any of the above books in my five minutes in the waiting room. I found another novel, Adam Thirlwell’s <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780374292256"><em>Lurid &amp; Cute</em></a>, in the car and read that instead.)</p>
<p>This tendency to overpack causes a real problem when I go away for vacation. If I need three books for a trip to the doctor, how many do I need for a week away from home? In the hopes of helping out others out who suffer from this very particular literary problem, I’ll list five books that I’ve read so far this year that would be worth the precious space in your suitcase:</p>
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Tue, 21 Jul 2015 13:53:30 +0000Anthony Domestico37438 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgWhat's in a Name?https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/whats-name-1
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<div class="field-item even"><p abp="833">David Brooks wrote recently in the <em abp="834">Times</em> about what he calls “The Robert E. Lee Problem.” The <a abp="835" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/opinion/david-brooks-the-robert-e-lee-problem.html?_r=0">column</a> assesses the implications of scrubbing symbols of the Confederacy from the South and elsewhere. By now the Confederate battle flag has come down from the South Carolina statehouse and elsewhere (I’m fascinated by the tipping-point dynamics of this move -- once Walmart gets on board, you know the thing is irreversible). But what about other symbols and figures that may bear a similarly odious taint?</p>
<p abp="836">Among the historical figures dear to the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee is paramount – and the map of the South is dotted with sites bearing his name. Brooks notes that Lee was, in his private life, a man of rectitude, intelligence and charm. Yet he joined the slave-owning insurgency, betrayed his oath of duty as an officer, owned nearly 200 slaves himself, and led the forces of a rebellion that triggered the deaths of <a abp="837" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up-by-20-percent-in-new-estimate.html">750,000 Americans</a>. Should he come down, along with the Stars and Bars?</p>
<p abp="838">Brooks says yes. “Every generation has a duty to root out the stubborn weed of prejudice from the culture,” he writes. “We do that, in part, through expressions of admiration and disdain.” He goes on to recommend removing Lee’s name from “most schools, roads and other institutions.”</p>
<p abp="839">I lived for years in Germany, among places and institutions dedicated to opponents and victims of the Nazis – all those Bonhoeffer Platzes and Sophie-Schollstrassen, streets and schools named for the rejected and reviled, the murdered and the martyred. There were no Himmler Parks to be found anywhere. Nor would anyone expect there to be. When a country is vanquished, or a despised ruling power toppled, the transitions of memorialization are simple: the statues come down. In a civil war, the challenge can be more complicated – especially one, like ours, in which a high premium was placed on national political reconciliation, and certain core conflicts and resentments were never worked out. </p>
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Sun, 19 Jul 2015 17:06:32 +0000Rand Richards Cooper37436 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgWhat is "I Refuse"?https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/what-i-refuse
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<div class="field-item even"><p>The fiction of the Norwegian writer, Per Petterson, particularly his <em>Out Stealing Horses</em>, published almost a decade ago, has received general critical acclaim. Character, setting, mood and landscape open up a world familiar and strange. When I read him, I find a singular point of view, a consciousness shaped in a world <em>in extremis</em> – and all the more dramatically powerful for that.</p>
<p>The phrase, “I refuse” occurs three times by my count in Petterson’s new novel of the same name. It is spoken as an encouraging assertion of life over death – as in “I refuse to die.” So Tommy, one of the chief characters, to his mortally sick, adoptive father Jonsen – who dies soon after. It is also a denial of family or marital obligation. Tommy refuses to bear responsibility for his aged, abusive, real father; and a waitress, Berit, refuses to wear her wedding ring, despite her husband’s demands, to free herself for an assignation with Tommy. Refusing becomes a form of independence, an assertion of the self, against the constraints of family ties, vows, or the menace of death. In their contexts, the refusals seem desperate, and ultimately unfulfilling. The sources or motivation for the decisions “to refuse” lie unexplored, rather stated as facts. The Norwegian world of Per Petterson is not simply physically chilling, but deeply emotionally so.</p>
<p>This is a complex and teasing narrative, built around sharp disjunctures in time sequence and narrative voice. First person accounts by the two principals, Tommy and Jim, extremely close boyhood friends, reveal their chance meeting at the very beginning of the novel. They have not seen each other for over thirty-five years. There are third person accounts of the events that caused the break in their friendship and reveal how Tommy’s mother disappeared and how he came to be raised by Jonsen. Siri, Tommy’s sister, recounts her brief romance with Jim, and his painful, inexplicable rejection of her.</p>
<p>The plot, if plot there is, takes its energy from the first, chance meeting, and through time shifts, alternation of voices, works its way to the frustration of any future meeting, and suggests the major theme of the novel – the isolation of each of us, and the corresponding inability to know the other person. Deeper still, Jim, whose adolescent ability in school, and his blond good looks, appear to set him apart and give him the advantage over his rough and unpredictable friend Tommy, suffers deep emotional depression, and scarcely survives a suicide attempt.</p>
<p>One typical Petterson scene points both to the inscrutability of motive and the lingering effects of guilt.</p>
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Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:02:49 +0000Edward T. Wheeler37435 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgCalvariumhttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/calvarium
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<div class="field-item even"><div>In Pope Francis's carefully constructed encyclical, <em><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html">Laudato si'</a></em>, chapter three is entitled "The Human Roots of the Ecological Crisis." In it the pope seeks to go beyond the symptoms of the crisis, graphically depicted in chapter one, to its deeper causes. Foremost among these he singles out the dominance of the "technological paradigm" that shapes and distorts actions and perceptions.</div></div>
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Fri, 17 Jul 2015 15:20:48 +0000Robert P. Imbelli37434 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.orgThe Future of Heythrop Collegehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/future-heythrop-college
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<div class="field-item even"><p>I was in London last week and all the Catholic talk was of the impending closure of Heythrop College, the Jesuit school of philosophy and theology that has been a constituent component of the University of London since 1970 and that has existed in some form or other for exactly 400 years. Evidently this is a decision that the British Province of the Society of Jesus took only reluctantly and a significanbt blow to lay theological education in the United Kingdom. But why and how it came to this is, if not exactly shrouded in mystery, quite hard for an outsider to determine.</p></div>
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Fri, 17 Jul 2015 13:11:57 +0000Paul Lakeland37433 at https://www.commonwealmagazine.org